NGOs charge Brazil's Bolsonaro with risk of indigenous 'genocide' at UN

[Judi Lynn]

by Sue Branford on 5 March 2020

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An isolated indigenous group in Acre state, Brazil. Image by Gleilson Miranda / Governo do Acre under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

“The Moxihatetea [uncontacted indigenous group] is vigilant and they want to keep away from the Whites. They don’t know who the gold panners (garimpeiros) are and they don’t want them to approach them. They flee deep into the forest to get away from them,” said Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa during his address at the opening of the 43rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on 2 March.

Wearing a traditional headdress and speaking in the Yanomami language, Kopenawa expressed deep concern for the future of the Moxihatetea, an isolated indigenous group living within Yanomami Park, an indigenous reserve located in the very north of Brazil, near the frontier with Venezuela, and covering 9,664,975 hectares (37,317 square miles).

“The gold panners began to steal their food — their cassava, their bananas, their sugar cane. … The Moxihatetea attacked them with bows and arrows, but the gold panners, more violent, reacted firing at them with their shotguns,” Kopenawa told an international audience.

“The Moxihatetea fled higher up the river, but there are gold panners there too, by the Catrimani River. The Indians are surrounded. I don’t know them personally. I’ve only seen their huts from the air. But I’m very worried. Soon they will be exterminated. There’s no doubt the gold panners will kill them with their shotguns and their illnesses, their malaria, their pneumonia. The Indians have no vaccines to protect them. They will all disappear.”

More:
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/03/ngos-charge-brazils-bolsonaro-with-indigenous-genocide-at-un/